Manufacturers commonly recycle one-time use cameras by replacing some parts at every cycle and inspecting and reusing other parts for multiple cycles. This approach conserves resources and allows the use of some parts that may not be reusable without risking quality, but maintains high quality in the recycled cameras. For example, plastic lenses in one-time use cameras are commonly replaced, since the lenses can be scratched during use in a manner that is not readily detectable without very careful study.
Replacing some parts during recycling and retaining others has the shortcoming that replaceable parts must be carefully separated out, since it is difficult to quickly differentiate used parts from new replacements for those parts. For example, one-time use camera lenses are small and all look alike at a quick glance.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,761,542 discloses a one-time use camera having a film door, which when opened to remove exposed film, breaks an anti-backup pawl. This approach is limited to a particular rear cover and anti-backup pawl.
One-time use cameras commonly include labels that describe use of the camera and have other useful or decorative information. Some of these labels must be tom or otherwise disrupted during recycling to remove exposed film. U.S. Pat. No. 5,472,543 entitled Method for Label Application Using Bernoulli Effect", which is hereby incorporated herein by reference, discloses a labeling method in which a label is floated on an air cushion into a substantially exact alignment with an area of an item receiving the label. It has been determined that the precision of label placement provided by this method is very great.
It would thus be desirable to provide an improved methods and cameras in which replaceable parts are breakable and are broken during recycling.
It is further desirable that improved methods and cameras be provided in which the breaking is associated with disrupting of a label.
It is still further desirable that improved methods and cameras be provided in which the breaking is irreversible.